Cooperative control of marine vehicles using the receding horizon concept and consensus theory

This paper envisages the use of the receding horizon concept to deal with the path following control problem of marine vehicles, deployed in cooperative mode. In this way, the system comprises a Lyapunov-based model predictive control to guide the vehicle along the desired path, and a moving horizon estimator to provide noise attenuated estimates of the states required by the control. It also comprises a consensus-based cooperative controller to solve the collective formation control problem. The performance of the whole system is assessed through numerical simulation, considering three vehicles operating in cooperative mode along a 2D path. The results exhibit the efficacy of both controllers, evidencing the quality of the outputs supplied by the estimator.